1. Not taking social media seriously

There’s over 800 million people using Facebook, and over 200 million Twitter users -  not to mention, a similar number of folks on LinkedIn, and yet many businesses still dismiss social media as a flash in the pan.  Your business has the potential to take advantage of this massive online hub; ignoring it is a huge folly. You don’t have to start with a presence of your own if you’re not comfortable.  Using social media to listen to, and learn from, others in your industry can be a valuable research method, and it is also a great way to get a feel for how social media is used in your sector.

2. Ignore it and hope it will go away

Back in the early nineties when I sold Internet technologies, lots of companies weren’t convinced that the Internet would take off, so they ignored it and hoped it would go away. Many were left scrambling at the last minute to catch up online and some didn’t survive. A  hundred or so years ago many naysayers dismissed the phone. The same story is now replaying with regard to social media. Don’t stick your corporate head in the sand – social media isn’t going away and the sooner you accept that, the less risk to your business.

3. It’s only for small business

I’ve read a few articles recently that write off social media off as a tool that’s only useful for small to medium sized businesses. Many large, established businesses use this as an excuse because they have done things the traditional way for so long that they know no other way. However, pioneers like Whole Foods, Southwest Airlines and Ford are proving that social media can be a driving force for larger organisations too, if it’s done right.

4. The Intern can do it

Many organisations get a young intern to maintain their social networks because this person has hundreds of Twitter followers, or is on Facebook all the time. However, just because you are familiar with using these tools socially doesn’t mean you know how to use them for business.  I am not saying an intern can’t do it, but you should make sure that they understand your goals, mission, audience, brand and such first, so that they can represent you appropriately online.

5. Failing to consider company strategy

Point 4 leads me nicely to point 5 – not approaching social media from a strategic perspective. Only 8% of companies surveyed in a recent Forrester report are using social media in ways that tie in with their corporate objectives.  Again, companies often embark on using social media for the sake of using it rather than using it from a strategic perspective.  Before your company  sets out on the social media path you should ask – who is your target audience, what is your message, which tools are right for your business given your brand and mission, and how can you use social media to augment your everyday activities. If you do that, your social media efforts are more likely to amount to something.

6. It’s all about you

In the old business world, marketing was all about corporations; all activities centered around the product and service, and not the consumer. Every message had to be vetted – which took time and meant the the company was in control.  Many organisations take this approach to social media, and then wonder why they are spending lots of resources but have few results and little return to show for it. They aren’t succeeding because they need to re-engineer their approach. These days, it is not about you, but rather, it’s about your audience and every social touchpoint should reflect that. To be effective in social media you need to focus on your target audience, be able to move faster, and to communicate in the moment before content gets outdated.

7. Blatant selling

This is the biggest faux pas you can make with social media. Never use social media to blatantly sell. It is okay to promote your offering, but in your face selling is off putting. Here at Out-Smarts, we use the 80-20 rule – 80% of our posts are aimed at adding value, and only 20% are promotional.

8. Failing to set goals and objectives

As with any other business function, you should set goals and objectives before you start rather than haphazardly setting up your social shop  (as it were). What is it that you hope to achieve? You may want to build community with your target audience, extend your reach to new communities, use social media as a conduit to extend the reach of your content, drive traffic to your website, etc.  Whatever your goals are, you should document them, quantify them and make sure that they are achievable.

9. Failure to measure success

Many companies have no idea whether their social media presence is benefiting them or not, nor are they able to respond to what is being said about them online. Once you’ve determined your goals, you should put in place tools that allow you to measure your success and to listen effectively.  These might include free tools – for example; for web traffic analysis you can use Google Analytics, to measure your Facebook following use Insights, for Twitter use counters or paid tools like Radian6 that allow you to monitor and measure engagement.

10. Failing to take a holistic business approach.

Up until recently, many businesses have looked on social media as a stand alone approach rather than considering it as a way to complement and augment their entire marketing strategy.  2012 is going to be the year when the penny drops and companies realise that the best social media projects are those that complement their real world activities.

1. Create a Custom iframe Tab for Your Facebook Page

2. Tumblr: The Easiest Way to Blog

3. 10 Easy Ways to Get More Links to Your Website

4. Add Social Media Icons to Your Sidebar Without Using Widgets

5. What You Need to Know About Facebook’s Promotion Guidelines

6. Using Social Media for Recruitment – Part 1

7. Connecting Your Social Media Accounts

8. Steps to Change Your Twitter Handle

9. How to Protect Yourself on Facebook

10. How to Get More People to Like Your Facebook Page

There you have it, our top 10 most read blog posts of 2011. Happy reading!

On your profile, you will see a few highlighted recent images and if you click the ‘view all’ button you will see the 100 most recent pictures you have uploaded to Twitter, along with the corresponding text you originally tweeted.

To upload an image direct to Twitter use the following steps:

Step 1:

Login to Twitter and click the ‘new tweet’ button, in the ‘what’s happening’ box, click on the camera button to add an image from your saved files.

Step 2:

Add a tweet to your image after you’ve uploaded it and click ‘Tweet’ to both send it to your Twitter stream and to your gallery.

Your image will be archived in your Twitter gallery as long as it’s one of your 100 most recent tweets. After that, it will be replaced by your most recent image uploads.

Want to know more? Here’s Twitter’s official introduction to their new image galleries:

Almost every week, I’m asked questions on the merit of social media. People are curious about why one would need to use facebook or twitter. My usual response is that social media works, but it only works if you make it work for you.

Of course it takes time and effort and you will need to moderate your social media accounts. Could you hire someone to do that for you? Sure, but you could also hire someone to look after your kids and raise them. Is that what you want?

In order to clearly explain what I mean by “making it work for you” I thought I would share what my process is and how I make it work for me.

Fortunately, I started early. I’ve been blogging since 2004, so blogging is part of my social media strategy. This strategy is no more than a word though. I don’t have a blogging schedule and I’m not very discipline. I write blog posts when I have something to say but I always write on topic.

If you choose to start a blog, think about what you want to blog about. Check out other blogs and see what they are doing. Would you be simply repeating what others are already saying? Do you feel like you have something important to add? Will you be gaining clients or positioning yourself as a market leader if you do?

More importantly think about your love or writing. If you dislike writing, blogging may not be for you.

I think I joined LinkedIn as early as 2002. LinkedIn was quiet for a long time but recently gained a lot of traction and criticism. I was happy enough with LinkedIn, I never paid attention to it and connected with people I knew when requested, but about 8 months ago, I started receiving many more requests from total strangers. For some reason LinkedIn became more about how many connections one has than who your connections are. I examined my LinkedIn profile and decided that it really wasn’t serving, so simply killed it. Since then, no more requests to connect with strangers.

Since then created I’ve created an about.me profile and posted my resume on Zerply. Why? They were both free and fun to put together. If either one of them follows in LinkedIn’s footsteps and becomes a nuisance, I’ll just delete them.

I joined Facebook 3 years ago (I think). You can look for me if you want but I won’t friend you, sorry. I only use facebook for family and yoga. I use it as a tool to keep informed of upcoming yoga events and look at my sister’s picture. That’s it. I don’t have a fan page and I’ve never ‘Liked’ a page. I personally am not a fan of facebook, because I find it too cluttered and messy. Some folks love it and it works for them, great, but it’s just not for me.

I was a bit late to join twitter and took a while to get it, but twitter is by far my favourite social media tool. I like it because it works for me.

Again, like facebook, I’m very particular about who I follow. 99% of the people I follow are either WordPress developers or work in the web industry. I keep the number of people I follow to about 200 and unfollow anyone who posts too many drunken tweets, sexist ones or only talks about hockey.

Because most of the people I follow are WordPress devs, I tweet a lot about WordPress and use it when I have questions. Just yesterday, I had issues with github. I tweeted my dismay and sure enough, a few minutes later, I had answers to my problem. How brilliant is that?

Sure I could have done the same on facebook, Google + or LinkedIn, but twitter is the medium I prefer.

I don’t think that there’s a definite guide on how to use social media. We all have different needs, different likes and dislikes. If you are curious about social media, I would encourage you to just sign up and open account. Any of them will do. Just try it out. Accounts can always be closed if they are not for you.

There are many dos and don’t when it comes to social media. I won’t go into all of the details here as I am no social media expert. If you’re interested in reading more about Social Media and learning a few tips and tricks, I would recommend that you subscribe to Boxcar Marketing’s Newsletter: Underwire. It’s very well written always packed full of interesting tidbits.

The biggest changes are to the ‘following’ link, under the profile tab. Now, instead of seeing a list of everyone a person is following, you will see their Twitter stream as they see it. The exception is that you will not be able to see the tweets of people they follow that have protected their tweets. This is what users will see when they click the “following” link on Out-Smarts’ Twitter page.

To see the old following list, click on the ‘people’ tab as shown in the above image. This will enable you to see all of the people that person is following in the old format. From the people tab you can also see a list of people you are both following by clicking the ‘you both follow’ link.

You can also access the old following list by clicking ‘view all’ beside the ‘following’ heading on the lower right hand panel.

Finally, Twitter has introduced a new ‘shuffle’ feature. When you have clicked to see who a person is following, and are viewing their Twitter stream as they see it, you’ll find the shuffle button in the upper right corner of your screen.

Hovering over this button tells you that you can ‘jump to someone you follow’. This option takes you to the Twitter account of someone you both follow, and shows you their Twitter stream.

What do you think of these new features?

Social Media widget adoption is one of the fastest growing trends online right now.  According to Website Magazine adoption rates have increased by 80% in the last year.  What are widgets you might well ask? Well, they are not inexplicable little items found at the hardware store that you might think they are, they are those icons your see on websites, the ones that let you click to do something.  And they should be an important component of your social network growth strategy.

Web widgets are “small applications that can be installed and executed within a web page by an end user”, they can vary in complexity according to the application that is launched when you click.

Web Buttons

Not to be confused with web buttons or badges (like this Twitter one) which are simple icons on the website that you click to take you to another page, web widgets do something more complex by launching java or flash applications.

Social Media Widgets

Social media widgets for networks like Twitter and Facebook shown here are among the most widely used.  If a company has a presence in these forums, then it is absolutely essential that you showcase and link to that presence on your website.  Doing so allows cross community pollination allowing website visitors to find and follow you on your networks too.

To create basic button widgets, simply upload an image to your server and use your CMS interface to create a hyperlink to profile then cut and paste the code into your website.

Creating a custom widget for your site can be just as easy as long as you don’t need a highly specific application (for that you should talk to a developer). If it is a social media widget you are looking for then most of the major networks provide web widgets that you can customize  and cut and paste to snip the code onto your site. Sometimes called social plugins, these allow visitors to your website to click and interact in some way with your social media pages.

Facebook allows you to create widgets to tell things to your fans, to get people to like your page and more.  To create these go to your Facebook page and click on marketing and take it from there or begin by exploring Facebook Developers.  For Twitter’s equivalent, their resources section is the place to go to build Twitter widgets for your website.

Social Media Plugins

Other widgets come in the form of plugins you can add to your website.  WordPress offers a plethora of plugins that you can adapt and add to your website allowing visitors to interact with your social networks.  If you are using WordPress, either ask your developer to add these or you can easily do so yourself by clicking on plugins on the left hand side panel and then on add new to search for the widgets you want.

Social media and web widget adoption is growing quickly because of the benefits these little bundles of internet joy provide.  If you want to build your community online then they are one of the best ways to facilitate doing so.

Related articles:

http://www.out-smarts.com/2010/05/17/how-to-get-more-people-to-like-your-facebook-page/

http://www.out-smarts.com/2009/04/02/add-social-media-icons-to-your-sidebar-without-using-widgets/

Keep It Simple and Achievable

The Out-Smarts mantra for our non profit clients has been “Keep It Simple and Achievable”.   Adding social media tools to the strategy of non-profit business is essential in our networked world and tools such as Facebook, email, blogs and twitter are not only cost effective they also encourage a  two-way conversation between people and organizations that can effectively increase the momentum and reach of a non-profit -  but it has to be manageable given your time and resources.

Good Planning Makes for Good Fortune:

Non profits that focus first on developing a clear strategy are best positioned to succeed with an Social Media program.      The first step is to develop a strategy that authentically reflects the organizations strategic goals and vision –  whether the aim is to increase fund raising opportunities, engage volunteers or educate the public.

Here are some questions to explore to jump start your Non Profit Social Media strategy:

1.      What do you want to accomplish with social media?

i.e. Do you plan to use Social Media to:

• Listen and Learn?
• Build Relationships and Issues Awareness?
• Improve Reputation?
• Generate Conversations?
• Drive Visitors to a website or blog?
• Taking Action or Fundraising?
• All of the above or other?

2.    Identify and Research your Audience:

• Who must you reach to meet your objectives?
• What do you want to say to your key audience? (and what will they say back!)
• Which social media tools does your key audience currently use?
• Is there research required to better understand the online social behavior of your target audience?

3.    Integrate your Social Media with existing marketing – harmonize with your online approach with off-line message:

• How does your social media support other components of your communications and fund raising strategy?
• Is your website Social Media ready?

4.    Change can be hard –  Social Media means added transparency for your Organization

To move forward with your strategy you will need to face these common fears and concerns:

• Loss of control over your message
• Dealing with negative comments on-line
• Perception of wasted of time and resources
• Suffering from information overload already, this will cause more
• Not being successful, fear of failure

5.     Pick Your Tools and Your Leader

• What tools to support your objectives?
• What tools suit your audience?
• What tools do you have the capacity to implement?
• Who will be responsible for over sight?

6.    Get Started

• Do you need any outside expertise?
• Who will implement your organization’s social media strategy?
• Do you have a Social Media Policy to provide posting guidelines
• Determine how much time you can you allocate to your strategy?

If your Non Profit can answer most of these questions it is clearly ready to step out onto the Social Media stage with your message.   Remember keep it simple and achievable.   Treat your first steps as experimental.  Go easy and record your successes and challenges to share with others.

A good place to start when entering the realm of social media is with the heavy hitters; Facebook, Twitter, YouTube for video content, and your business blog. If this list still seems overwhelming, don’t despair! There’s a way to connect all these social networking sites so you’re not spending half your day posting the same YouTube link to all your different followers.

It is best to set up Facebook as your hub when connecting all your different social networking sites. This is because Facebook has a huge amount of applications that have been developed for all sorts of social networking related purposes. All you have to do is go to the Facebook Application Directory and search for the appropriate application, chances are it’s there in the directory. Next up, how to connect your blog, Twitter, and Youtube accounts to Facebook.

Blog:

Connecting your blog to Facebook means that each time you update your blog it automatically posts to your Facebook page’s wall, as well as archiving in the ‘notes’ tab of your page. The process for linking your blog isn’t obvious when looking at your Facebook page, but it’s well worth the search. To begin, click on ‘edit’ below your page’s profile picture. Next, click on ‘Apps’ in the list on the left hand side of the screen. Once there, find the Notes application and click ‘Go to App’. Now, on the left hand side of the screen you should see ‘Edit import settings’ as the very last option. Click this. You should now see a screen that looks like the photo below.

From here, enter the url of your blog and click ‘start importing’. Your blog is now auto posting to your Facebook page.

Twitter:

To connect your Twitter and Facebook accounts, log into your business’ Twitter account, then open a separate tab and go here. Find your business page, click ‘link to Twitter’ and follow the directions.

Youtube:

Using the Cueler application, you can connect your Youtube and Facebook accounts so that videos posted to your Youtube channel automatically post to your Facebook page as well. To do this, click here, and then click ‘install’. This will bring you to a screen that looks like this:

Choose the page you want to add the application to, and follow the directions to automatically post Youtube videos to a new Youtube tab on your Facebook page.

Following the above steps will help reduce the amount of time it takes to update your social media accounts. However, don’t forget to manually update your accounts as well. A mix of manual updates and auto posting allows you to save time, but also ensure that your business maintains a humanistic and approachable presence online. Also, if people follow your business across multiple social networking channels, taking the time to manually post, along with auto posting, ensures they won’t continuously see the exact same content numerous times.

We can help:

If you are interested in connecting your social media accounts and are looking for more guidance, contact us at Out-Smarts Marketing – we provide social media and internet marketing planning services to help you achieve your online goals.

The Internet is a great way to expand your career horizons and get to know new and influential contacts. Here are a few pointers to bear in mind when using social media to network.

1. Dont try to network in every Internet networking hub out there. Choose those where you get the biggest impact (i.e. those that your existing contacts already use, those that reflect your target audience, or those most applicable to your niche). The most popular are LinkedIn (Professional Network), Facebook (fastest growing) and Twitter but there are many networks that are industry or job specific (like Active Rain for real estate) too so take time to check them out.

2. Leverage existing on-line networks to grow new ones. I use the Out-Smarts’ Facebook Page profile to promote our Twitter account and vice versa and add more contacts in that forum

3. Promote your activity in your chosen forums by including it in business cards, profiles and on your website.

4. Use widgets. Most of the social networks allow you to widgetize a link to your profile. Add this to your site, blog etc and include widgets for other networks in your networking profiles.

5. Always remember to be professional in these forums – ask the Granny question and make sure your content is appropriate to your professional standing.

6. When you meet new contacts in the real world find then on-line and add them to your networks.

7. Trawl the friends of your friends and contacts and add those you know or those gurus in your business.

8. Dont spread yourself over to many networks or allow them to suck up your time. Schedule it into your day.

9. Join groups. Facebook and LinkedIn both offer groups. Join applicable ones and gain access to more people in your field.

10. Participate in the right forums. These should relate to your industry or market and to those of your prospects.

11. Ask and answer questions and use your status to attract new contacts.

12. Blogs can be a great way to build your network too. If you have a blog, always follow up with people who leave comments to connect with possible prospects and peers.

13. If you don’t have a blog then use blog comments as a forum to connect with influential bloggers in your industry, to build awareness of what you do and to add value for their visitors in turn.